Multi-Facet Design of Interactive Systems through Visual Languages

Abstract

In this chapter it is recognized that the knowledge relevant to the design of an interactive system is distributed among several stakeholders: domain experts, software engineers and Human-Computer Interaction experts. Hence, the design of an interactive system is a multi-facet activity requiring the collaboration of experts from these communities. Each community describes an interactive system through visual sentences of a Visual Language (VL). A first VL allows domain experts to reason on the system usage in their specific activities. A second VL, the State-Chart language, is used to specify the system behaviour for software engineers purposes. A communication gap exists among the two communities, in that domain experts do not understand software engineers jargon and vice versa. To overcome this gap, a third VL permits Human-Computer Interaction experts to translate the user view of the system embedded in their Visual Language into a specification in the software engineering Visual Language.